


True Heart of Wexford

by rotrude



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Class Differences, Drama, Friends to Lovers, Ireland, M/M, Romance, Violence, War, mention of off-scene massacres, sex with a fever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-01-19 15:36:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1475068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rotrude/pseuds/rotrude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wexford, 1798, Merlin is the Catholic groundskeeper on a manor belonging to Anglo-Irish aristocrat Arthur Pendragon, scion of a generation of absentee lords. While Merlin's day job entails looking after Arthur's property, he's also involved with the United Irishmen, whose object is to unite the people of Ireland against the English. Political upheaval is about to plunge the country into turmoil. In the midst of all this stands Arthur Pendragon, who's become Merlin's staunch friend in spite of everything that divides them: faith, class, position, and obligation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	True Heart of Wexford

**Author's Note:**

> A huge heap of thanks goes to argentssleeper for betaing this!
> 
> The art for this was made by mella68. Here's a link to the page on which she is hosting it: [Art for Rotrude's Historical BB](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1453063)
> 
> Written for the historical big bang.

  


art

 

March, 1798

 

The night is dark, clouds hiding a moon further shrouded in mist. Tendrils of it have risen higher, reaching up into the air to a height that would come clear of most men's heads. They intertwine, weaving into knots and threads, forming gleaming shapes of ghostly indeterminacy. The lamp hanging above his door throws light over the path. It's a tremulous orange glow that criss-crosses the cobblestones that form the avenue that cuts away from Merlin's lowly cottage and leads towards the grand house looming in the background. It illuminates the façade of the cottage too, smoothing out the surface of the square masonry blocks that belong to the structure. Its feeble, quivering glow is enough to spot the piece of parchment stuck under the external edge of his window sill. 

In spite of the howling wind, Merlin leaves the security of his threshold to go and retrieve the message. With trembling fingers he undoes the parchment. Even when he has it flattened, its creases similar to the waves rising on a choppy sea, Merlin can't make out the writing. 

The light is too faint for that.

With a sigh, he pockets the parchment and steps back inside, where warmth welcomes him in. For a brief moment, a moment during which he doesn't think of Will and his senseless death, Merlin almost crushes the parchment, but a memory of the way the light at Ballymoney beach slanted off Will's hair, tingeing it russet made him direct his steps to the table. Here, he pulls the round and dusty glass chimney from the oil lamp, turning the knob in clockwise fashion. 

With hands that tremble as though he has the palsy, Merlin moves the wick forward so it's placed right above the brass holder. There he has to stop, an exhale rattling out of his starved lungs. Breathing does him good, for his hands get steadier. Although he has no scissors at hand, he trims the wick with a tug. Slowly and to the sound of creaking fixtures, he undoes the brass holder from the glass base, places the holder aside, and fills the base with the oil, its paraffin-rich smell hitting Merlin's nostrils. 

Quickly he replaces the wick holder, then blindly searches a drawer for matches, strikes a fresh one along one side of the box and watches a flame crackle to life. Before it can burn his fingers, he touches the flame to the wick.

The room is flooded in light, revealing mouldy walls and crusts of paint peeling off it, together with the ramshackle nature of most of his furniture. Still, that is not what Merlin's eyes latch on, he knows his home too well for them to rouse any interest in him; instead they peruse the document that has been left for him. 

The glow of the light reveals a chicken scrawl that is one word long:

 

Tonight,  
T. 

At the bottom, tentative lines make up a drawing that would have been good but for the hasty nature of its composition. On the paper a harp lodged within an oval is depicted. The words 'It is new strung and shall be heard' are engraved on a scroll wrapped around its base. The cap of liberty sits on the instrument. Together with the word EQUALITY the drawing conveys a very clear message.

 

Taking it in, Merlin breathes out harshly. Looking out the window, he can see the trees shake in the gale, their branches sough and shake. Fetching a sigh, he wraps himself in a big cloak, an old one that belonged to his father, and pulls the hood. A blast of wind hitting his face, he leaves his home.

 

***** 

 

The street is empty, meandering, snaking in front of him like a ribbon, walls converging at the end, past the sweep of a rise. Houses stand either side of it, all sloping roofs and narrow windows, wood for their exteriors. At this hour no sound but that of his footfall resounds. No light glows from the homes he passes. The little illumination there is comes from the moon. 

But Merlin doesn't need much of it. He knows where he is going. At the end of a narrow side street there is a shoemaker's dwelling, the sign advertising the business swinging in the wind. The wooden door rests closed against the night, but Merlin knocks all the same.

A peep hole opens, large blood shot eyes spying into the street. “By word!” a rough voice says.

“ _Éirinn go Brách_ ,” Merlin answers in Irish, the words musical and foreign on his tongue, long lost. 

With a shake and a creak, the door opens. A man holding a half consumed tallow candle in his hand grunts at him, but his lips distend in recognition. Merlin follows him through a workshop displaying the tools of the trade, past a door that gapes open and down a narrow flight of stairs that moan with every step taken.

He is ushered into a basement room that is larger than the workshop upstairs and must have spread under a second building. An assembly of men is gathered around a table that has been rigged in the centre of the space available. On this table a man stands. He's shed coat and jacket and is only clad in his waistcoat and shirt sleeves, the latter rolled up, to reveal a sinewy forearm. “Compatriots,” he says, fist formed, arm bent, “what is going on is unacceptable. In the present great era of reform, an era during which we should expect freedom and emancipation, we are instead the victims of a tyrannous government. Our religious rights are trampled upon. Catholics can't be elected or appointed state officials. Other dissenters, sharing in our plight, aren't granted the same rights as the Anglicans. Our parliament, nominally independent, is shackled by the English power of veto. In the face of all this can we stand silent?”

A chorus of voices answers, “No.”

There are other comments too, side diatribes starting and bubbling over before they are quashed by the first speaker.

“No, of course not. Tradition can no longer serve to uphold absurd and oppressive forms that rule against both reason and the common interests of mankind.”

Invective surges up again. The commentaries either brief swear words or convoluted side arguments that are as prolific as the first speaker's address. A man bumps shoulders with Merlin and says, “Damn right that all is.”

Merlin agrees with him, says a few words in a low voice that are geared not to disturb the speaker.

“We have no national government; we are ruled by Englishmen, and thus servants of Englishmen, whose object is the interest of another country, whose instrument is corruption; whose strength is the weakness of Ireland."

A clap of bursting echoes through the chamber. “That's true. That is God's honest truth.”

“The aborted invasion on the part of our French allies has only given the English time,” said the speaker with fervour. 

“And they've used that failure against us,” a member of the crowd shouts.

“Indeed my friend,” says the speaker emphatically. “Ever since then the people at the Castle have stepped up their war against us, infiltrating our ranks with vile spies and informers--”

Everybody looks at everybody else. Merlin is sure they harbour doubt in their hearts. Not wanting to cast even the barest suspicion on his fellow conspirators, Merlin doesn't let his own gaze roam the room. 

“Our rulers have turned a blind eye to military excesses,” the speaker continues, his fists punctuating his speech. “They burn our houses, torture the members of our association, making them captives, if not downright murdering them in their homes.”

“They stormed Bond's house in Dublin,” says the man closest to Merlin, a farrier that Merlin knows goes by the name of Cedric. “I saw that happen.”

“Yes,” someone else adds from the opposite corner of the room. “Martial Law is threatening the future of our country.”

“But we will not let it,” the speaker says, turning on his table so that he is facing the man who spoke from the corner. “We must rise first.”

“But after the failure at Bantry Bay the French aren't so keen to offer us help anymore,” someone says from the depths of the room.

“They are vacillating,” agrees Cedric.

The speaker lets his hands fall to his hips, shaking his head. With his foot he taps a rhythm which he punctuates with his words, “No, sir, we can't wait for the French. We must rise. We must rise and set Ireland free. Are you all agreed?”

Everybody shouts yes, even Merlin does. His voice falters with misgiving at first, but it recovers because of a memory that stabs him to the quick. Instead of keeling over with the pain, his voice steadies and becomes louder and louder.

“Do you want to hear what the plan for Wexford is?” the speaker asks.

The answer is a roared, “Yes.”

 

***** 

 

Grey dawn seeps across the sky, lacing it pink at the softest of its edges, where it's threaded with clouds. Dawn light casts the landscape in an indeterminately pale hue, the brisk cutting light eerie and filled with shadows as well as the promise of a new day. Mulch and mud squeak and pucker under under Merlin's boots as he approaches the grounds-keeper cottage. 

On the doorstep, he cleans his boots as best he can but gives up the battle before it's fully won, leaving them sitting close to the arch that gives into the doorway. With little fanfare, he pushes the door open and marches in. The oil lamp is throwing light over the figure currently sitting in Merlin's chair, feet stretched forward, body sprawling against the rigidity of the seat. The man's elbow is bent, resting on the grainy coarse surface of the table, two fingers braced against his temple.

“Arthur,” Merlin says, surprise more than tiredness taking his breath.

“I suppose I shouldn't ask where you've been,” Arthur says, his voice clipped. “But I believe in honesty and openness.”

“Arthur,” Merlin says, or perhaps wails, cornered. 

“But above all I want believe in our friendship,” Arthur says, each word coming out slowly as if he's trying to articulate an important thought. “That despite our differences--”

Though he knows better and his heart bleeds for it, Merlin cuts across him, “There was a time when you wouldn't have called us friends.”

Arthur's chest caves sharply with an intake of breath. “What was I supposed to say? I'd just come home back then.”

“I don't know, my lord.”

Arthur rises, levering himself off Merlin's modest chair, a creaking sound released by the wood the moment his frames leaves its cradle. “I thought that actions spoke louder than words,” he says as he nervously paces. He resembles a caged tiger that way. “I thought that my.... my friendship for you had become obvious and--”

Merlin spares him his misery because in spite of concepts like justice and retaliation, he can't not. “You are my friend. I consider you my friend.”

“Then why are you with them?” Arthur asks, jumping the hurdle of asking for confirmation of his suspicions and leaping directly to the one true conclusion.

Merlin doesn't ask him how he knows. It could have been the work of spies or simple intuition on Arthur's part. He should probably worry since there was talk at the meeting of undercover agents occasioning the arrests of United Irishmen, but he doesn't. He doesn't believe even for one minute that Arthur would have lowered himself to do such a thing, lurk in the shadows so as to be able to point his finger at brave patriots fighting for their liberty. “Because I must,” Merlin says, “Because I'm Irish and Catholic. Because Irishmen can't stand for office while most of Ireland's revenue goes to England...”

“I came back, didn't I?” Arthur asks. “I turned our tenant out to oversee the land myself.”

“Arthur, you can't fix the problems of an entire country alone,” Merlin says, pressing his fingers squat against the bridge of his nose. “I know you mean well and that you've done wonders by Duncannon, but not all English aristocrats with landed property in Ireland have done the same. Hell, we're a persecuted nation, a nation that has no right to call itself such because it cannot form into one.”

“This is Will talking,” Arthur says, with a flinch, his mouth curling around the words with distaste but not spite.

“Because he died in Kilmainham?” Merlin asks. “Because he died in prison where he was detained for questioning even though he was only a simple farmer?”

“So it is because of him,” Arthur says. 

“Do me the favour of believing I know my own mind,” Merlin says, not looking Arthur in the eye. 

“You weren't like this,” Arthur says, walking up to Merlin and taking his face in his hands. “Before Will, you weren't a conspirator.”

Arthur's fingers scald his skin and make breathing impossible. “And what should I do?” Merlin says, his heart beating out of synch. “Watch my countrymen suffer?”

“There will be blood, Merlin,” Arthur says, his thumb toying with the hair that curls above Merlin's temple. “You've never wanted blood.”

“No.” Merlin doesn't appreciate violence anymore than he appreciates tyranny. “But we've come to a point... The Americans rebelled and now have a nation to call their own. The French toppled their king.”

“And now they're ruled by a bunch of men as corrupt as any Bourbon ever was,” Arthur says tiredly. “And their top general, Bonaparte, is set against war with England right now. Which means no likely support for your friends.”

“Their cause is my cause.”

“We can get reforms in other ways,” Arthur says.

Merlin wishes it were so; he wishes he could believe that was at all possible, that all British lords in Ireland were like Arthur, ready to be there when the land needed them, instead of renting it out for revenue that inevitably left the country. But no foreign rule would ever be that gentle. Arthur is an exception, an exceptionally upright man thrust in a situation he has little control over. “I wish I could spend my life serving you, helping you with the estate.”

Arthur's head snaps up, his eyes rounding and catching fire. “Then, please, Merlin--”

“But I can't,” Merlin says, knowing what Arthur is going to ask of him: not to act, to stand by and watch as his friends fight the fight for freedom. “Arthur, I can't.”

“Don't you like it here?” Arthur asks, feebly. “I'll make an effort, promote you to steward.”

“Your peasant grounds-keeper?”

“You're worth much more than that,” Arthur says, the jut of of his jaw accompanying his words, his lips forming into what, on a child, would have been a pout. “Whatever I may have said in jest, you should know you're appreciated here at the manor.”

“I love living here,” Merlin says, opening the floodgates of his heart, saying everything short of the secret that must never pass his lips. “I'm happy here.” He licks his lips to ease the flow of his words. “When you came back from England, I didn't believe you'd be any good. But I was wrong and you learnt how to look after the estate. So I enjoy serving you now.”

“You did give me some good pointers,” Arthur says with just the edge of a smile Merlin desperately wants to see expand, though he knows it can't, not in this situation.

“You finally admit that!” he says gleefully on a high the circumstances most certainly don't warrant. Then the reality of what they're at, what they're saying, hits him. “Of course, you'll be wanting me to go now.” 

Arthur's hand slips from his face to his shoulder. “No, you're staying for as long as you want to stay.”

“I don't want to be a danger for you,” Merlin says. “So I was thinking I could--”

“No,” Arthur says. “You belong here and that's the last of it.”

Merlin wants to make a grab for Arthur, sit him back down and give him bread and cheese, and act as though this is a regular night, another one of those times Arthur comes visiting, commenting on the mouldiness of Merlin's food and how stuffy the old manor is. On those occasions it never matters that the house is grand and not at all 'stuffy' or that Merlin's cottage is run down and draughty and dark. Arthur just comes. But Merlin knows that his choice has put all that behind him, made that closeness impossible for the both of them.

Now they're sitting on opposite sides of the fence, and there'll never be any going back. “Thank you. But you know I'd never involve you. I'd die before I did.”

“No defeatist talk, Merlin,” Arthur says sharply.

Merlin nods. “We wouldn't want to walk into this with a forcedly upbeat morale.”

Arthur huffs.

They stay like that for long moments that seem to stretch and implode at the same time, giving Merlin the impression they've been standing there for centuries and for the blink of an eye. It's a blink of an eye Merlin wants to trap within his fingers and not let go of, because it might be the last with Arthur.

When it's over Arthur, walks to the door, shoulders hunched, head down. Merlin springs forward to see him out. Their hands brush, Arthur's fingers sliding the length of Merlin's palm.

It's a momentary touch and then it's gone – like Arthur is.

 

**** 

 

May, 1798

“Dublin failed to rise,” Daegal says, “someone informed the authorities of our plans.”

Merlin cupped his mouth with his left hand, with the other he sought the support of the country hedge wall. “I fear to ask what that means.”

“A huge force occupied all the sites we intended to take well before we could even assemble.”

“So the revolution failed,” Merlin asks, his hopes for a day in which he could hold his head high as an Irishman crushed, the one he harboured of staying with Arthur and watching him become the man he's always been destined to be, a good leader, getting more substantial by the minute. For a brief second he entertains a dream of being there for Arthur all the time, of watching him grow old, even if from the sidelines. He doesn't delve into that. It's too traitorous a thought, both to his cause and to his runaway heart. “It has been quashed.”

“No,” Daegal says, leaning closer to Merlin to deliver his secret in hushed tones, “We're mobilising. We plan to attack military and loyalist targets, get arms, do what our fellow insurgents in Dublin couldn't do.”

“So it's up to the rest of the country now?” Merlin asks of Daegal.

“Yes,” Daegal tells him. “Merlin, gather your things, say your goodbyes, because in a day and a half we strike.”

Merlin nods. He strives to make plans, to adhere to a course of action. He can't. His mind runs in circles and the only word that echoes in his brain is 'goodbye'. That is what he focuses on, and the form his goodbye shall take. At the same time, he also feels a pang in his bones for the comrades he's lost. But after Will death is a swan song he's used to. What he isn't used to, despite the months of preparation and secret meetings is the actual thought of going to war. Trying not to raise suspicions, living his life according to its usual routines has almost let him bask in a sense of immutability, of peace, that is actually bogus. “Where do we meet?” Merlin asks, trying to shepherd his thoughts in the proper channel, think of the actions he must undertake. 

Daegal gives him a rendezvous point, an hour. “Watch out for Cedric,” he also tells him. “I don't trust him. After he came to one of our meetings there, there was a military round up. Some of our arrested compatriots fessed up under torture and that led to even more arrests. I know for a fact Bagenal Harvey was taken.”

Merlin has never met the man, but he's aware of how important he is to the cause. “I will watch out.”

He and Daegal part, a few words in hurried Irish making up their goodbyes.

The road home takes him through a swathe of countryside spring has already worked its magic on. The grass is a lush green, almost blinding to the eye, shining with dew that's like diamonds sticking to the tenderest leaves. The ground rises and falls, over a hill and into a dale, the landscape never boring. The early morning sun gives it the lustre of a perpetual a glimmer. The road that cuts through the fields isn't even dusty.

 _This is peace_ , Merlin thinks. The natural world is going on as it's always done, the gears of life in motion. Nature has no idea what's about to happen. This beauty that has a slice of Merlin's heart, this soil that's always made him want to fight on, is almost lulling him into in an unsettling sense of quiet.

If he stops now, he thinks, nothing's gonna happen. He's going to stand there, sprout roots and leaves, become a tree, watch the earth breathe, corn ripen, the sun shine and pale, the ground frost over. That would be a kind of peace. He would stay there and watch Ireland flourish.

The fact that he knows that's not really true, that he would more likely see the blood of his compatriots run in rivers, feeding the foundations of his broken nation, is what spurs him on.

At home he gathers some of his things, all he can fit in a small travelling bag, a change of shirts, some food of the kind least likely to be considered swiftly perishable, and a book. Merlin isn't a reader. He can read; he most definitely can. He was taught as a child by a careful mother who sat him on her knee and showed him his letters. “You'll be proud you can read,” his mother said then. She was wrong. He isn't exactly proud, but he is grateful, grateful that he can do something that has opened his eyes to some free thinking, an ability that the starving masses, through no fault of their own, can't lay a claim to.

But that is not the reason he brings the book. The reason he brings the book are the scrawls in the margins, scrawls his father made, little notes he left, reflections, all imprinted with a careful hand, whose slant and curl Merlin knows well.

His fingers run down a page filled with some such notes before he buries his book under his garments. When he's done with that, he has nothing left to do. If this was a day like any other, he'd make a round of the property to survey it, make sure the borders are still marked, and that poachers don't get sent to the the county gaol for trapping small rabbits.

But today is no ordinary day. Without looking back he closes the door behind him and walks up the avenue of trees. Instead of going downhill towards the gates, he treks towards the house. He makes it to the servant entrance and mounts the stairs, a narrow flight that grows larger the higher up he climbs.

It's early yet and no one challenges his right of access. The servants know him and all of them are too busy to question his presence here. Merlin ends up on a landing that gives onto nothing else but a set of white lacquered doors, one of which he pushes open.

Carpets cushion his footfall as he steers down a corridor that is wall-papered in damask up to a height of nine foot. Windows punctuate this hallway at regular intervals, offering a view of the artificial lake and yielding light that throws the space ahead in stark relief.

Merlin doesn't hesitate before knocking. He knows deep down that if he does, he'll run in the opposite direction and then it'll be too late and he'll have lost the only opportunity to do this.

When Arthur's voice wafts to him, saying 'enter', Merlin pushes the door open. 

Arthur puts down the cup he was holding. “Merlin,” he says, a note of surprise colouring his voice.

“You were having breakfast,” Merlin says, taking in the tray bearing biscuits, jam, butter and eggs that goes together with the ornate and flowery crockery. In particular he notices the leaping herons chasing each other around the sugar bowl, about to take flight, and the fold of Arthur's napkin, snow white and delicate. “I'm sorry, I--”

“Don't you dare leave,” says Arthur, crossing over to him. He's dressed, in his shirt still, but dressed for the day. His sleeves are rolled up, exposing his forearm up to mid length, the skin pink as it tends to be after a thorough scrub down, a bit rougher on the underside of the elbow. “I'm serious, Merlin.”

Merlin drops his travelling bag on the floor, an item Arthur claps eyes on the moment it leaves Merlin's grip. His fingers feeling nerveless, he nevertheless manages to secure the door shut behind him. “I didn't know whether I should come or not,” Merlin says, tongue tied in a way he's never been with Arthur, not even when his friend first came to Ireland, wanting to govern his estate as a King would rule his subjects, not understanding one jot about the country and how unfair his right to that rule was. “I had so many thoughts, about appropriateness, but they all lost out, I think... to the thought of not saying this, not--”

“You're going away,” Arthur guesses, and it's not as if Merlin's drama-fuelled delivery hasn't been warning enough. “You're doing it.”

It's the brokenness in Arthur's voice that makes Merlin's swallow his words, those he tried out in his head and heart and those he can't even think about, let alone get out. He stands there, with his mouth parted and his heart beating a tattoo on his tongue. And he doesn't do anything. He wants to curse himself because this is his chance, the one opportunity he has to say goodbye and tell Arthur he wishes him well. How he is in Merlin's heart and would always be, even if Merlin can't stay and watch him become the person he's geared to be. “Yes.”

“I thought,” Arthur says, dropping his eyes. “I thought that the revolt had failed, that with Dublin not rising...”

“You wanted it to fail?” Merlin asks, feeling no trace of the indignation he should be experiencing at Arthur's wish, Arthur whose father is English and whose claim to the estate comes from his mother, the heir of a line of Anglo-Irish aristocracy. His forebears preferred the solace of living in England to the responsibilities involved in looking after their Irish estate and that's what made him the enemy in Merlin's head for a long time, or at least before he got to know him and his potential. “For... for...”

“I hoped that no blood would be shed,” Arthur says, meeting Merlin's gaze, no shame in his. “But most importantly,” he adds, licking lips that look soft and in no need of such wetting, “I hoped it would all come to nothing so you'd stay.”

Arthur's words are like so many knives caught under his skin. They make him bleed, carve him open from the inside. Arthur's palm cradling Merlin's is like the dam that stenches all those wounds, like fresh water on his skin, making him breathe. “I don't know what it's going to help. I realise it is unwise, selfish, and pure folly,” Arthur tells him as he leans in, moving closer and closer, until his lips ghost across Merlin's cheeks and over his cracked lips. “But if this is farewell, then I want a token from you. I want to lie with you.”

Merlin feels his lungs go smaller. Or perhaps it's the air he's breathing that has changed in quality and made it impossible for him to subsist on it properly. He recognises, in a far corner of his brain that is still functional, that this is the moment he decides. It's not that he doesn't know what the decision entails, but he can't encompass the thought of it happening with Arthur, because Arthur, however much a part of Merlin's heart, is someone who belongs to another walk of life, someone who transcends Merlin's life and as such would never be a part of it, not in such a fundamental way. But all those thoughts dissipate the moment and Merlin says, “Yes, yes.”

Arthur breathes out, short and sharp. He's so close Merlin can taste his breath. He counts the flavours on it, separating them in his head until he can't concentrate anymore because Arthur's lips are around his, rabbit fast and tentative.

Merlin opens his mouth, moves it so it slides against Arthur's, causing his flesh to catch and stick with Arthur's. It is not a kiss yet. There is no pressure but the glide of lips on lips, the moments when one of theirs is crushed between the wet grip of the other's.

Arthur curls his left hand around the creased folds of Merlin's shirt, pulling him closer. Pressure points from the pads of his fingers light up Merlin's cheek. Merlin walks into that embrace, tilts his face so that he can feel Arthur's palm against his face, so that his chest can brush against Arthur's and he can experience the full solidity of it, of him. He wants to walk away with this memory, even if his heart is breaking. 

On a swell of emotion, Merlin walks into Arthur's arms, grabbing a handful of his lower back. With his free hand, he cups Arthur's neck, finds the strands of his hair and threads his finger through them.

For his part, Arthur buries his head in Merlin's neck, breathing him in in long heaves. His lips score Merlin's neck, sucking and bruising, kissing with lips open as though to exhale. Dragging his mouth across his neck, touches like pearls, and then under his jaw, Arthur makes Merlin shiver as if he has no control over his limbs. “Arthur,” Merlin says as Arthur's hands start on his clothes. 

Without disentangling himself from Merlin, Arthur pushes Merlin's jacket off his shoulders. It falls like a rag to the floor, like the assembly of patches and mends that it is. Merlin doesn't spare it a second thought, his brain in a fog of longing and happiness, filled with Arthur, whose hands are wandering over Merlin's chest, palming the rough, homespun fabric of his shirt.

A mutual decision, a movement that starts with them both, allows them to part, to mutually do away with their shirts, Arthur's fine one that ripples under Merlin's touch, and Merlin's hand-me-down that was his father's and that still sits a little oddly on him, in spite of widened shoulders and growth spurts.

When their chests are bare, Arthur palms Merlin's heart. 

Merlin wonders if he can detect its stuttering rhythm, the pain with which it twists in his chest every time Arthur touches him. He asks himself whether it's giving away all Merlin's secrets. 

The heel of Arthur's hand presses against Merlin's flesh and Merlin fancies he's being branded. Arthur's touch burns. As he slowly slides his fingers down Merlin's chest, blunt nails lightly indenting Merlin's skin where they find the sharpness of hips, Merlin gasps.

So that his lips are again at Merlin's neck, following the line of his shoulder to the point and back, teeth teasing the skin, Arthur bows his head.

Merlin swallows his nervousness down and his breathing accelerates but in odd starts and stops he can't, for the life of him, control. He leans close again, something inside him loosening. It's a heady feeling, part pure joy, part excitation, part foreknowledge of loss. His breathing stutters with the nascent pang of that but Arthur connects their lips again and the singing of his blood takes over. 

Arthur makes their kiss deep this time, his tongue pushing into Merlin's mouth and tangling with Merlin's. When they tilt their head to accommodate the kiss Arthur's eyelashes flicker downwards. Their chins, stubble rough, graze each other. Their hands roam, from shoulders to arms and down the spans of their backs. 

When he's gorged on touch alone to the point it's nearly too much, Merlin's hands slide to the fastening of Arthur's trousers, the heel of his hand brushing against Arthur's hardness, Arthur reciprocating. He works his hands under Merlin's small clothes, causing Merlin to choke on a gasp. 

The curl of Arthur's hand around him is perfection. His touch is thrilling and brings heat to Merlin's lower belly, scattering his thoughts like a covey of birds before a hunter. Merlin's own rhythm on Arthur falters. He has to breathe through his nostrils before he can pick it back up.

Their kiss goes deep, hot, their tongues meeting. When they draw back for breath, Arthur smiles against his lips, and the lines around his eyes increase in number, until Merlin stops counting them. They are pushing into each other's hands now. Burning inside, wanting to sink into Arthur in a way that goes deeper than kisses and bodies, Merlin arches his back. He pants and Arthur does the same murmuring in his ear in hot moist gusts.

With each rise and fall, their chests push together. Merlin rocks his wet cock in Arthur's hand. Arthur surges against him, and they're both frantic, writhing against the door, gusts of breath wet between them. Merlin needs to struggle not to thrash, not to moan, not to alert the household to what they're doing. Then Arthur bites his throat, a pinprick of pain that makes Merlin's blood go hot, and Merlin's soul spinning away on a tide that bears Arthur's name.

“Come to bed?” Arthur says, between nips that pain and wind Merlin up. His voice is husky. “Let's... You have some time, don't you?”

Merlin wants to chase his pleasure. Wants to follow blind into it. “Yes, I have some time.” None of the rebels are going to care if he turns up an hour or so later provided he fights the fight when told to. “I want to.”

Arthur grabs his wrist then, takes one of Merlin's hands in his and walks him to the bed. What strikes Merlin is that the bed has already been pristinely remade from the night before. He can see the starched angles of the sheets, the careful soft mounds of the pillows. Merlin feels like he doesn't belong. It's too clean for him, too neat. The light bathing the bed in its pale effulgence makes this mundane piece of furniture appear like a surreal setting.

“Have you changed your mind?” Arthur asks, concerned.

“No,” Merlin says, because at this point very little can make him alter his course. “I just-- wasn't expecting that.”

Arthur tilts his head in a failure to understand. In a way Merlin loves him for it. Arthur hasn't stopped to consider that Merlin has nothing to do with his world. He's just invited him to it and doesn't mind about the difference in their ranks. Such a consideration is sweet in its naivety. It breaks Merlin's heart. The damage to it isn't helped by Arthur's gentle kiss, or by Arthur gently pushing Merlin down onto his bed.

While Merlin toes off his shoes, Arthur divests him of his trousers. They come off easily. 

Kissing the length of Merlin's leg as he goes, calf, shin, the bony protuberance of his knee, the softer tissue of his thigh, Arthur crawls on the bed. His slow going dissolves Merlin's body, turns it into water, water breaking a dam and gushing everywhere. When Arthur nuzzles his hip and moves his head towards his groin, his heart climbs to his throat. The noise Arthur's lips make as they close around Merlin's lips, suckling, grazing, dilutes Merlin's insides. “Arthur,” he says, hankering for a shoulder, the solidity of it, which he thinks will brace him.

Nothing can brace him though for the warmth that floods him when Arthur sucks him into his mouth, tip first. “Arthur!” Merlin shouts, before biting on his fist.

A hand, on Merlin's hip, Arthur backs off. “Merlin,” he says rough, meaningful. 

Merlin would wonder what it is that he's trying to convey, what is hidden behind the veil of that soft, lost look he's wearing now, but he can't process. Arthur's mouth descends on him, retreats, the flesh of his foreskin rubbing on Arthur's lips as they engulf him again in their heat. Sobbing, he pushes into Arthur's mouth in short stuttering shimmies of his hips. Arthur's tongue slicks patterns on him; his swollen lips tighten on him.

As he draws his way back up, Arthur locks eyes with him. Even though sweat stings and clouds his vision, Merlin blinks to keep the eye contact. That look on Arthur's face, so earnest and determined, combined with Arthur tonguing his slit, push him into white-out, his cock spurting seed in little convulsions of the flesh.

Merlin is sucking in big breaths, his belly hollowing in his search for air, when Arthur turns him, rolls him flat on his stomach. Merlin feels so broken down to his constituent parts, that he lets Arthur position him as he wants.

Arthur drapes himself over Merlin's back, a blanket of weighty warmth. The rustle of fabric indicates that he's lowered his trousers. His cock nudges between Merlin's cheeks. He locks fingers with Merlin's and starts rubbing himself on his back. As he does he grunts and pants wetly in Merlin's ears, sheds kisses on his nape, kisses that like winter flowers sometimes bloom into nips. Merlin can feel the heat of him, the line of hardness that is him, his chest pressing Merlin down making of Arthur a real presence. The one clear thought Merlin has in this situation is that he wants Arthur to take his pleasure, have something of him to remember him by. If he persuades himself to be so vain as to think that Arthur will want that at all in the distant future.

 

"Merlin," Arthur says, voice low and ruined, “I can't stop.”

“No need to,” Merlin tells him.

Arthur ruts on top of him, muttering nonsense words that tickle Merlin's ears. He noses Merlin's nape affectionately, his other hand in Merlin's hair. Arthur's thrusts shorten, pressing Merlin against the mattress, rocking him forward, and then they go haywire, losing their tempo in a sequence of long and short stabs that culminates in a stifled sob Merlin think he will remember a while.

Between his legs drips Arthur's come, hot and sticky, smelling of him at his most primal.

After a few beats, Arthur's breathing lengthens. 

Merlin says, “Shouldn't you move?”

Arthur readjusts himself on top of Merlin, tangles their legs. “No.”

“Arthur,” Merlin says.

Arthur's lips open around the top nob of Merlin's spine; his tongue laves the spot. “No.”

Merlin feels like melting against the mattress, moulding his body to its yield. “Please.”

“You can sleep,” Arthur says sucking on his skin, under his ear. “You can surely sleep some.”

“I'd sleep for hours.” the nature of his sleeping patterns has been too fitful these days for him to trust his body to just nap shortly. “Better not.”

“Have some breakfast then,” Arthur says, pinching his sides. “You'll need your energy. Revolutions don't run on fumes.”

“Arthur, you can't ring for breakfast.”

“No, perhaps not,” Arthur says, his chin rough when it skims Merlin's nape. “But I barely touched mine. You're so spare, the rebel army will have a field day with you. Really, Merlin, what kind of opposition do you think you're putting up?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Soldiers need meet on their bones,” Arthur says with an impatient huff. With a push of his arms, he's off Merlin and standing.

Merlin flips onto his back and watches him walk to the desk Merlin found him seated at when he first came into this room. His trousers undone at the laces, his cock pokes limply through the gap. Arthur, however, doesn't seem to mind this, how it makes him look. Instead, he assembles a plate for Merlin.

Merlin's heart clenches in his chest at the thought of the surreal ordinariness of this, and at Arthur's not so secret kindness. Without redressing, he joins Arthur at the desk. He bites onto some of the bread, barely touches the eggs. Arthur watches vigilantly and encourages him to take more. “I'm not starving.”

“Then take some with you.”

Merlin nods. It's not bad advice. He wraps some of the food in Arthur's used napkin and stashes it in his sack. At the basin he washes though despite repeated ablutions, he is still fairly certain his skin retains Arthur's smell. Not eager to shed it, he dons his clothes and is soon ready to go, food packed, garments straightened.

Arthur doesn't say anything. His eyes travel from Merlin to the floor and back again.

“Well, then,” says Merlin and then trails off, because he if talks now he knows he'll break down and let his feelings gush out of him in waves he won't control, like a biblical flood. “Time to go.”

He advances to the door. He already has it open when Arthur closes it with the flat of his hand. He turns him, dives for a kiss that's rough and breathless, teeth and edges, a clashing of tongues, a robbing of breath, and then steps back.

They share a look, one that lasts a few beats of the hallway clock. 

Merlin goes.

 

***** 

 

Under the leadership of a priest, they scour loyalist strongholds for arms. Merlin doesn't need weapons. He has the rifle that belonged to his father, the one that was given to him when he took the post of grounds-keeper. It's still perfectly functional if slightly outdated. Still he'd rather trust in such an heirloom than a rifled weapon, so he doesn't take anything. Because he can't give up on his comrades in arms he follows his leaders into the stronghold. Nevertheless he tries not be violent. His hands shake when they force entry in the army barracks and his skin crawls when the first confrontations break out. Screams and alarm bells fill his ears. Blood flows in the narrow corridors that spiral into the armoury. Bayonets pierce flesh; pikes respond. Officers are speared, blood forming darker patches on their wax red uniforms. Bodies sag along walls, eyes rolling upwards in a white out of death.

Merlin doesn't look, but he soldiers on. He punches a sergeant in the side, hauls him away from a peasant boy armed with nothing more than a trowel. He gets in the midst of a fist fight, a bayonet glancing off his side, the pain flaring his nostrils. His body protectively curls around it.

It's Daegal who carries him out, where the moon and stars shine, and sits him on a boulder. He passes him a flask full of a liquid that sloshes from side to side and makes this wave-like noise. It's some kind of bad liquor that prickles Merlin's tongue and has an after taste of death. It makes him dizzy but it helps with the pain.

When the rebels come out, carrying swords, sabres, muskets, it's clear that their numbers have already dwindled.

“Twenty, we've lost twenty,” Father Murphy says. He prays for their souls.

Merlin starts praying for his.

The following morning they gather at Oulart Hill. Women and children have joined too. Merlin studies a child's little hand as it curls around a skirt's fabric. It's a fat little hand, in the way of kids everywhere, but scraped at the knuckles, the nails coated in dirt. The child the hand belongs to puts his thumb into his mouth. Merlin's attention has so narrowed in on mother and child, he almost doesn't notice the runner shouting, “A company of soldiers is climbing the side of the hill!”

The news is confirmed when they see the wreaths of smoke coming from foot of the rise. “They are burning our houses!” a man says, pointing to the horizon line. “We've got to stop them.”

“No,” one of their leaders says, “they are trying to lure us there so they can run us through. We won't let them.”

Some of the rebels slip away at the sight of violence and at the prospect of having to manoeuvre around regular troops, the cause easily deserted. But most remain, stay, embrace arms. 

The leaders organise them as though they were regular troops. With a few words, they engineer a plan.

The regular cavalry moves to positions that seem dictated by the need to cut off the rebels' escape route. “That's good, we know where they are, we know what they're busy doing. We can stop them doing it.”

“They're advancing without waiting for the their artillery units, we can ambush them.”

Along with a large group of young, armed men, Merlin gets sent to do this. They form a line angled towards the militia's advance position. Merlin's heart in his mouth, clutching the butt of his rifle. Silence expands. Then chaos reigns. The militia fires at them. They hold. 

The regular soldiers reach killing range. Merlin shoots. He's standing in a file of men who are pouring their gunfire upon the regular soldiers. Merlin can't tell how many he downs himself, or whether his shots have killed anyone. He can tell that some of the men previously standing fold. It's isn't difficult to guess why. When they have culled enough militiamen with their line of fire, they charge them. Merlin is no soldier, but he shoots on more than one occasion, and generally avoids being skewered to death- A sabre fends the air, next to his ear. The man wielding it doubles over, then lies still, a puppet without its puppet master. 

Merlin turns. 

Daegal winks, reloads. “My pleasure, my man.” 

Gagging, Merlin takes possession of the sabre of the felled man but gives the corpse a wide berth. It's chaos all around him, bodies culled, screams, groans, the acrid smoke that comes after shots that keep being fired. Merlin feels the world is upside down and has no notion of what is going on until he realises that the militiamen have been overwhelmed and are fleeing, their red jackets recognisable dots zigzagging across the countryside. Soon enough most of those dots stop moving, stop twitching. They just cover the fields surrounding the hill, unmoveable, still.

Their numbers swelling as they march, they move to Enniscorthy next. High on the preceding victory they gain another one. British Colonel Maxwell retreats with his men. On the rebel side organisation tightens, plans are made and two days later, on a fine May morning that shines inordinately golden, they take Wexford Town. With it the county is theirs. There is talk of setting up a republican regime. There is talk of hope.

Merlin, huddled in a blanket, dares believe that maybe they have cut out a future for themselves. Still thoughts of tomorrow are as hazy as they come. Merlin can dwell on nothing but the happenings of the day and even those come in a cloud of half formed impressions that loom heavy and dark on his mind. He falls asleep with an ache in his side, from the bayonet cut that a woman whose name he doesn't know patched up, and with a wound in his heart that's nearly as real as the one that shed blood.

In the morning, Daegal wakes him. He gives him some warm water that's stained with tea and two biscuits that are stale but still taste of egg and flour rather than rat droppings. 

“You come from Duncannon, don't you?”

Merlin blinks. “Yeah, I do. What has... Why are you asking?”

“One of our leaders, Joyce, wants to occupy the area and the earl's estate,” Daegal says. 

“What?” Merlin sits up, pushing away the blanket, the movement loosening a stitch or two in his side. “What do they want with A--” Merlin bites his tongue. “With the Earl of Duncannon?”

“What would they want with a pro-establishment Anglo lord?” 

Merlin jumps upright, he starts off at a lope.

“Merlin,” Daegal shouts after him. “They told me to tell you you're to be dispatched to Dublin, to try and raise it.”

“Sorry, I can't,” Merlin yells back, running towards Joyce's tent. It stands uphill and is guarded by two big farmer types, whose hands are as big as planks and whose torsos are large enough to suit. “I need in.”

“And who would you be?” farmer type number one asks. 

“Merlin Emrys,” Merlin says, trying to sneak past that mountain of a man. “I need to talk to Joyce.”

The farmer type puts his paw square across Merlin's chest. “Not the likes of you.”

“Aren't we rebelling to get no more of that?” Merlin asks, but it serves nothing. He's not allowed entrance.

He waits by the tent all night. There is a guard shift, but the tune is the same. The leaders of the revolt are off limits.

Merlin can do nothing but sit there all night, the tent in sight, hoping to catch a glimpse of Joyce, or anyone who will listen and has enough power to stop the occupation of Duncannon. People go in, go out. Merlin hears the high notes of tense discussion, of disagreement. But nobody comes out till dawn and then it's for a call of nature, during which they most categorically don't want to be interrupted.

There's only one thing left for Merlin to do. Without orders, he joins the group headed for Duncannon, the body of souls meant to occupy it. When he spies the roads he knows, the peculiar bend of it and the hulking shape of a tree whose branches fork outwards like a crooked hand, he experiences a pang of homesickness. It doesn't matter that comparatively speaking he's been away for such a short time, he feels that pang in his bones with the potency of some kind of evil charm.

In spite of some chafing in his side, which throbs in the same tempo as his footfall, Merlin keeps pace with the rest of the army. 

He doesn't force the gates of Duncannon though. He follows in the wake of those who do. When two lads try and tear down a statue, he shouts at them to stop. “Why,” one of them asks, “you on the side of the Anglos?”

“No,” Merlin says. His is more a visceral response than a judgement on the political state of things. “This is not what we're rebelling for. This is vandalism.”

“This is comeuppance,” the lad says. “It's in the Bible.”

The second lad isn't quite so vocal. He merely punches Merlin in the ribs, leaves him coughing and on his knees in the grass. Before they can reduce Merlin to a pulp, one of the lieutenants comes up and stops the brawl. 

“But he said it was vandalism,” the lad who punched Merlin says.

“It is,” the lieutenant says. “Now let him be.”

“But they burn our houses, the people inside left screaming,” the defacer says. “Why can't we do the same?”

“Because we're better than them,” says the lieutenant with conviction. “Now scatter.”

The boys do. The lieutenant helps him up. “Gwaine Jones,” he says.

“I need to make it inside,” Merlin says, favouring his side, his ribs smarting and causing him to bend over, as though he could cradle them.

“What for?” Gwaine asks, shielding his eyes to look to the mansion. It shimmers in the bright light of the morning with its marble whiteness.

“Because Lord Duncannon is in danger.”

“Unlike that poor statue, he's responsible for the state of things in the county,” Gwaine says.

“No.” Merlin shakes his head. Words don't come, but a keen sound of denial does. “You don't understand.”

Gwaine must have read him right, something of his desperation must have shown, for he guides Merlin up the gravel alley that leads to the house, and then into the manor's reception room, which Joyce and his men have occupied.

Merlin stands behind Gwaine to the side of the room. He stays inconspicuous and still until they march Arthur in, the end of a bayonet prodding him forward. A noise is torn from Merlin's throat.

They push Arthur onto his knees. 

Joyce says, “Arthur Pendragon, Earl of Duncannon, do you know of what you stand accused?”

Arthur thrusts his chin up. “Frankly not.”

“You're accused of profiting by the oppression of the Irish people,” Joyce says, walking towards the kneeling Arthur. “Living off them. You furthermore stand accused of supporting the tyrannical regime imposed by the English, of being an English aristocrat, and therefore serving the interest of another country through corruption. You have weakened Ireland by disposing of power and patronage, curbing the spirit of honest Irishmen. As such we condemn you to death.”

“No,” Merlin shouts, tearing towards Joyce and thus stumbling into the centre of the room. “All of that... what you're accusing him of, it's true of others but not of him. He's made a point to stay in Ireland to look after the estate, made sure that the boys and girls born on it get an education. He's loaned money to tenants and improved the estate to make it profitable for more people than just himself.” 

Joyce cocks his head. “That doesn't change anything. Look around, look at the riches this man surrounds himself with. These are all riches Ireland has been deprived of.”

“Not by him,” Merlin says. “They're part of the legacy he's heir to. Are we starting to punish people for the sins of their fathers? Is that what this revolution is boiling down to?”

“The English bear responsibility for the oppression of Ireland,” Joyce says. 

“I couldn't agree more,” Merlin says, standing upright, lending passion to his voice. “But make the ones responsible pay. Not those who've done their best.”

“He's still an English nobleman living off Ireland's labour,” Joyce says, looking at Arthur with contempt.

“My mother was Irish,” Arthur says, with as much passion as Merlin put in his own tone. “And I respect her ancestry.”

“Anglo Irish and protestant,” Joyce corrected.

“Are we going to make distinctions on the basis of how men pray now?” Merlin asked, trying for a logical out.

“They do,” Joyce says, referring evidently not so much to Arthur as to those who share his same origins. “They bar Catholics from office and discriminate them.”

“That has nothing to do with sentencing him to death,” Merlin says, standing before Arthur, arms out as though that alone can save him. “That is an abuse of the power you've just gained.”

“You are right,” Joyce says, taken aback, then adding in the spirit of reflection, “That shouldn't be done. We can't repeat the excesses of the French if we want to preserve the spirit of our rebellion.”

“Thank you,” Merlin says, his heart beating again. “Thank you.”

“But we are taking Duncannon as our headquarters,” Joyce says, a finger held-up. “This place is ours to do with as we please. Pendragon will be under our custody, confined to his quarters.”

“That is a violation of my righ--” Arthur starts.

Merlin kneels by his side, the gesture easy since his legs do feel particularly hollow today, and says, “Arthur, please.”

Arthur opens his mouth and Merlin feels certain he's about to ruin everything and get himself killed, but he looks at the assembled crowd, at their rag tag state, and then at Merlin, and Merlin must be pleading right, because Arthur nods.

“Take him to his quarters,” Joyce orders and Arthur is manhandled there.

 

**** 

 

Holding the tray with one hand, Merlin knocks on the door.

Arthur opens and invites him in, seating himself on the bed. “Come to bring the prisoner food?”

“You've got to understand them,” Merlin says, heart swelling with the notion that Arthur is for the moment safe. “This is our time to make a change.” 

“Two wrongs don't make a right, Merlin.”

Merlin sets the tray on the desk, a wave of deja-vu clouding his senses. “No, but it's not as if there is any other solution.”

“They are currently busy looting my home.”

Merlin is aware of that. He's seen some of the insurgents take carpets and curtains. Some have made a bonfire of the furniture. “It's all objects.”

“That my mother loved.”

“Arthur--”

“Is this making us enemies?” Arthur asks, not touching an ounce of the food Merlin's brought. “Are we sitting on opposite sides of the fence?”

Merlin looks away, scratches at his forehead. He can feel the smears of dirt put there by sleeping in the rough. “No, you come first for me.”

Arthur's eyes widen. “But—”

“You--” Merlin rubs his side, winces, and that's when the room starts gyrating around him in blurry vortexes “I--”

Heat flares up his flank, burning him from the inside out, through his shirt and jacket. He runs cold, pearls of sweat breaking on his skin like frozen needles sharpened on his body. His vision clouds over and he free-falls. 

Arthur catches him, his arms around Merlin. “What's wrong, Merlin?”

Merlin can't harpoon thoughts. “I-- dunno.”

“Something is patently wrong,” Arthur says, shouldering most of his weight.

Being in Arthur's embrace feels so good Merlin can't summon any urgency, any fear. “My head's a bit... a bit...”

“Did you get a blow to the head?”

Merlin shakes his head. He'd remember if he had. “No, no.” He rubs his side again, waking it to a shower of tingles.

Arthur bats his hands off, then tests his side.

Everything blackens.

When sensation returns, he finds himself sat on the bed, without his shirt on.

Arthur is palpating his side, right where the stitch-work ends in a whorl, the thread sticking out like a splash of dark colour. The edges of the wound are fat, raised like ridges, and throbbing red. “You didn't tell me about this,” he says, reproachful, his brow a quarry of lines Merlin loses himself in counting.

“It's a scratch.”

“It's puce and swollen,” Arthur points out. “It's infected. Who the hell did this hack job on you?”

“A girl following the camp.”

“So a prostitute and not a doctor?”

“She...” Merlin blanks of words; Arthur's face crumples in on itself in waves that shouldn't be anatomically achievable. Merlin reaches out to touch him. “Said she knew how to.”

“How to sew perhaps,” Arthur says. “Not how to keep wounds clean.”

Merlin is only half listening at this point. He slumps backwards, propelled by his own weight. Rather than of Arthur he has now a view of the ceiling, the frieze at the corner, full of whorls that are like vines, the quality of the plaster.

“Merlin!” Arthur leans over him, lightly slaps his cheek. “Merlin, for god's sake, Merlin!”

Merlin closes his eyes. He's still hearing the echo of Arthur's shout. “You, yes, you, I need help. Hurry.”

The stamp of boots sounds closer. “What's the matter with you, prisoner?” a voice tinged by a thick country burr asks. 

“It's Merlin,” Arthur says, his voice as taut as a line about to snap. “He's not well.”

There is no answer or Merlin doesn't catch it.

“He's one of yours,” Arthur says, probably more concerned than before. “Do something. Call a doctor.”

Again no answer is forthcoming. 

“Isn't this what you're fighting for?” Arthur says. “To have care for the children of Ireland, a future in which you can claim that?”

“I'll go to Joyce and see what we can do.”

Merlin loses focus then. He has no idea what happens next because the world fades away. Noises wash over his ears as though they were wrapped in cotton. His body floats and darkness encroaches. He burns. 

He sleeps, he guesses, if the forms that come at him and gawp at him with leers on their faces are anything to go by. The man he killed makes a cut-throat sign at him. Merlin flees his presence and seeks asylum in the darkness. His father smiles at him. A volcano erupts at his feet.

Colours whirl before his eyes and a new image coalesces before him. Sun shines over a field Merlin has a memory of, though he can't name the geographical location. He wonders at it. He knows this place. But his searching for the answer becomes redundant when the ground swells and swells and births corpses.

Merlin makes an effort not to look but the dream takes over and shows him severed limbs and disembodied heads. Once again, he flees into velvety nothingness.

The first stimulus he becomes aware of his someone rearranging his body, the feel of his shirt being lowered. 

“He has a fever,” an authoritative voice says. “And while the stitching held, the wound was packed with dirt. I cleaned it, patched him up again.”

“Is he going to be all right?” Arthur asks. “Is he going to recover?”

“The wound is shallow,” the first voice says. “I think that if the fever goes down, he'll be all right.”

“If?” The mattress by Merlin's side dips. “What do you mean if?”

“I'm a doctor, my lord.” the noise of dripping water tickles Merlin's consciousness, the tickle of crockery. “Not a fortune teller.”

Coolness frames Merlin's brow, a gentle pressure. “That is not an answer.”

“He's young,” the doctor says in a voice that trails off before gaining momentum again. “A little undernourished perhaps, but, overall there's hope for him. Still, nature is fickle.”

“What does it mean?” The cool object is removed from Merlin's forehead. Water drips. The object is again pressed against his brow. “Doctor, please.”

“In my experience no case is ever alike,” the doctor says, a tapping sound punctuating his words. Perhaps he's using a walking cane. “In two days he might be either jumping up and down or in a coffin. I have seen both happen so I won't commit to more of an answer than that.”

Merlin doesn't take the words amiss. He doesn't have it in him to panic though he understands they're discussing his death, and that Arthur feels some manner of indignation at the thought of it. Arthur will have to battle the concept for the both of them, because right now Merlin doesn't have it in him to take umbrage at the doctor's pragmatic approach. He'd rather not think at all.

When he's next in a position to pay attention to the goings-on, he realises someone else is in the room beside him and Arthur. 

“You've been nursing him,” Joyce says, curt, assessing, matter of fact.

“I scarcely have the skills,” Arthur answers, stiff. “But I'm trying to look after him to the best of my limited abilities.”

“He's clearly not just a servant to you,” Joyce says, the observation one that panics Merlin even in this half state of semi-consciousness.

It seems to affect Arthur too because his answer is guarded. “I've known him for the better part of four years, ever since moving back here from London.”

“I'd have thought someone like you wouldn't care about a servant.”

The bed creaks and the warmth at Merlin's side disappears. “Merlin is a good man, a brave man, and a loyal one. He doesn’t deserve to die or to not to be properly attended.”

“Your care for a commoner does you justice, Pendragon.”

“I'm not seeking to look good in your eyes.”

“No, I don't think you are at all.” A sound like a chair being scraped back rattles across the room. “I don't think that at all.”

“Thank you for allowing the doctor to see Merlin,” Arthur says, not addressing Joyce's statement at all. “In the circumstances...”

Merlin recognises the creak of the door, then Joyce's voice again. “We'll be out of your property by the turn of the week.”

Merlin falls under again and when he wakes, this time properly, the room is dark and Arthur is lying beside him, a fiery length of warmth. He is sleeping, Merlin can tell from his breathing pattern and the relaxation of his muscles. He has taken up a large part of the bed, his sprawl a lax one. 

Merlin turns on his side, the one that is not pulsing subtly. He still feels warm and wants to shed the blankets covering him, if not his skin, but for a moment Arthur is all that takes up his consciousness. For all that they have lain like lovers, he'd never thought he'd get to share a bed with Arthur, sleep in it in with him with no subterfuge at all. And though he knows Arthur just dozed off where he was with no forethought to all that their sharing a bed entails the idea makes him happy.

His palm lands flat on Arthur's belly; it rises when his ribcage lifts with his next breath.

Merlin smiles a drunken smile that pulls at his cheeks, hurts a bit too, as all type of movement does, but otherwise basks in Arthur's presence. 

At the pressure though, Arthur wakes, which Merlin hadn't planned on. “Merlin.” His eyes widen and round, with surprise and pleasure. “You're awake.”

“Yes,” Merlin says in a scratchy voice. “I'm sorry I woke you too.”

Arthur flips onto his side and cups his face. “You're still hot.”

“I'm fine.”

Arthur's eyebrow twitches up.

“I'm better,” Merlin qualifies. He feels like he has hibernated for ages and that reality is a step away from him, at one strange remove, but he's not lying.

“How much better?”

“My side doesn't hurt like before and the headache's not as...” In the name of honesty, Merlin considers his words carefully. “Not as pounding... Not as before.”

“Try and sleep some more, Merlin,” Arthur says, pawing at his face, thumbing the circles that must have formed under Merlin's eyes. “You're still not well.”

“No, I--” Words escape him, but he doesn't want Arthur to give up on him, to retreat behind a veil of politeness. “No.” He frames Arthur's face with feeble hands that thirst for Arthur and joins their mouths together, taking each of Arthur's lips in his, gently, pulling Arthur to to him, his hand flat on his back, under the nightshirt that ripples across his knuckles in a swish of fine silk that's like water.

Arthur doesn't resist and pushes his tongue past his lips, deepening the kiss with a sigh that escapes him and covers the fleshy sounds their mouths make as they slide together. 

Merlin pulls at Arthur's trousers, lowers them, bares his arse. Though Arthur's hips snap forward, he stops kissing Merlin and says, voice roughened, “Merlin, you're not well.”

“I could be better,” Merlin admits. There's a restlessness to his heartbeat he can't contain and his skin flares with heat he can't shed. It burns his cheeks with more than the passing stain of a blush and makes of his hands warming stones. But he wants Arthur, wants him with a hunger that the oblivion of his feverish hours have only heightened. He doesn't know what happens next and if he'll ever see Arthur again after this is done. Whether he fulfils the doctor's most pessimistic prediction or whether he marches again with the insurgent army he doesn't think he'll get to enjoy much of Arthur's company in future. And for that very reason he needs Arthur blindly, determinedly, with a focus so intense he thinks he'll dry up and that every cell in his body will rot, if he doesn't get more of Arthur now. Because he only lives for him. “I need you.” He puts a wet, slippery kiss to Arthur's lips, to his throat, and sucks a third on his bone, right where the hollow that flares into his neck is. “Please.”

“I--”

He cups Arthur's cock till it grows in his hand and Arthur growls, smothering the sound against Merlin's neck. “Merlin.”

“Arthur.”

Arthur mounts on top of him, presses his face into his neck, smothering sobs. Merlin works his trousers off, rucks up his shirt some. Arthur struggles out of his breeches, the feeblest moonlight playing patterns on his torso. His kiss, which he renews with vigour, is hotter than Merlin's fever. 

Merlin thickens, gets hard as rock. It hurts, with the insistent throb of undiluted want. Arthur opens him with one of the salves the doctor left behind. Once he's inside Merlin, Merlin's world tastes of him and is reshaped by him. There is a longing for Arthur buried deep in him, one that he feels he can never satisfy, a love that threatens to eat Merlin up and make him forget everything that isn't Arthur. He thinks not even this near perfect closeness can satisfy that craving. But he enjoys what he has because it puts dents of love in his heart and feeds his soul into a kind of happiness he'll never forget.

As he pistons inside him, Arthur lowers his brow to Merlin's. With his hips he wakes nerve-endings and Merlin's soul along with them. Their skulls rest against each other, lightly. With his thumb Merlin traces the rise of Arthur's cheekbones, swipes away the sweat that gathers at his temples and along the ridge of his nose. His lips cushion Arthur in a sticky kiss. Arthur moves faster, stills, comes inside him, Merlin coaxes himself to follow, the speed of his hand chasing that sublimation. He finishes with a moan that sounds like pain, but before he does and all thoughts scatter like clouds in a gale, he vows himself to be Arthur's, forever.

 

***** 

 

Merlin worsens the next day. He's not even conscious enough to know he does, but he gets told two days later, when he wakes, hungry like a steppe wolf. The world looks different to him now, more colourful, and starkly clear. It's perfect in its imperfection and Merlin loves its new found brightness, this quality that it has that makes him tick with a brief spark of joy. He lets himself smile at the dustmotes the sunshine showers him in.

A maid brings him breakfast, barely raising an eyebrow at finding him in the master's bed. That's the upside of having an occupying rag tag army on the property. Nothing looks strange and Merlin, in his familiarity, gets treated as a friend instead of an enemy. 

The food and medicine, the care Arthur gives him in his own blustery way, get Merlin back on his feet. On the fourth day Merlin leaves Arthur's chambers and rejoins the rioters. “To protect you,” Merlin tells him when Arthur averts his face and frowns. 

“From what?'” Arthur asks.

“You know what,” Merlin says.

He sleeps on the floor in the hall until a week later, when Joyce orders their redeployment. Arthur and Merlin's goodbye is a handshake. “Don't get yourself killed,” are the words that go with the gesture.

Merlin relies on memories to keep him going.

For nearly a month they have Wexford. Thoughts of liberty and regeneration surface in the mind of all, from the leaders to the commoners who are the backbone of the rising. The theory of revolution is put in practice and a republican regime takes shape. Though he has to fight for it, hope starts filling Merlin's heart. He dares believe that inequality and oppression will cease to have their sway over the country.

Orders from above come to the effect that the insurgent army is to be split in two. While one group is sent to Dublin, Merlin and Daegal are despatched towards New Ross. They're ordered to take the town, so they can carve a way to Kilkenny, in the hopes they can get the insurrection to spread. 

Everything begins at dawn, pale light washing over the top of buildings, a halo like ghost wings gilding statues and the arch of bridges, shining off the roofs the militia garrison defends. 

The defenders have dug deep trenches. They have filled them with men who are seasoned soldiers, or yeomen. Cannons sit at regular intervals between the line of trenches, aimed at the rebels, among whom Merlin stands, guarding all approaches and narrow streets the insurgents are supposed to take. Pikes glint in the sunlight that emerges slowly like the body of a ghost. Negotiations begin, a flag of truce waves white in the breeze. Its bearer is shot down. The besiegers heave with indignation. Merlin can sense it and he himself is left reeling. The gate stands before them, impregnable. Cattle is freed to confuse the defenders, grunts and bleating, savage clucking pierce the air, incongruous amid the groans of men. 

Marked out by the cadence of hooves on cobblestones, a serrated clop that is like a kick in the gut to Merlin, the English cavalry is sent out. They approach uniformly, their pace even, a death machine of the kind Merlin had never before seen, not at such close quarters. Merlin's captain shouts to them not to move, to keep ranks, and when the cavalry column nears, a wall of pikes meets it.

“And now let's take the gate,” one of the captain shouts to a chorus of elated voices. 

Merlin has no ammunition left. One of the captains gives him a bloodied pike he snatched from the hands of one of their dead comrades. Wiping at his mouth with a bloody hand, he says, “He doesn't need it anymore, does he.”

Merlin makes no comment. 

“What do we do now?” Daegal asks, the question one Merlin feels is on everybody's lips, or their hearts at least.

Gaze already focused ahead, the captain says, “We secure the town.”

“Without waiting for reinforcements?” Merlin asks, thinking of the books Arthur sometimes read by the light of the fire at home, books about Alexander the Great, and war and strategy. Not waiting seems to him disingenuous, something his fantasy Arthur would scoff at, but who is he to press his point?

“Yes,” their captain says. “We must use the momentum we now have. We can't wait.”

They have barely a few minutes to regroup. Merlin is at a fountain, drinking from a pail to slake his thirst, when the order to infiltrate the town comes. Under a sun that is growing hotter like the licks of a flame in spite of its paleness, they climb into the town. Luck is not theirs. They meet with a second line of defenders, streams of men, who hack, shoot and bayonet.

The defenders hide in the shadows, behind the clouds of smoke that pour out of burning buildings. 

The air is as hot as an oven, Merlin has soot deep in his lungs and coughs because of it.. His vision dims to next to nothing. He can't see the man standing next to him or those charging him. It's only a grunt alerts him to an attack. Muscles burning, he swings his pike forward. It connects. Gets stuck. Hands close around his throat, stubbly thumbs pressing at his Adam's apple. Merlin can't breathe and can't break the hold. He gasps for breath. Vision blurring, he bucks upwards, wrenching his pike away. The hands crushing his windpipe loosen their grip. His opponent topples backwards. 

Air stands still, charged with a smell of smoke. They fight street by street, building by building. Street warfare is a hard task, Merlin learns. Ammunition dwindles. Rebels have to withstand fire while unable to return it. It's just luck that preserves Merlin. He goes where he is told, helps his comrades. He does nothing different from the others, yet he isn't felled. 

Not even when a second swarm of militia comes at them. By then Merlin is moving aimlessly from post to post, ducking when bullets whistle past, fighting his way clear of two huge yeomen by way of twisting like an eel, punching and kicking. It's completely instinctive and there's no rhyme or reason to his fighting back. His stitches tear, mud covers his hands, sweat his brow, but he's alive when the next development takes place.

It's mid afternoon by the time they retreat. Merlin doesn't know whether that's an order or a group decision. He doesn't hear the order relayed if there was one, but follows his comrades, accepting deafeat. The air smells like smoke and death.

Merlin is lying shirtless on the grass a few miles away from New Ross, on top of the hill at Carrigbyrne, his cheek seeking contact with the grass, when a man falters into their camp and crashes to his knees. “They're burning them,” he says, no light whatsoever in his sparking eye. “They're burning the prisoners. Alive in the casualty stations. They know no mercy.”

Merlin gives the man water. That's the only thing he knows how to do. That gives him an idea. There is something he can do to feel less useless, less like a killing machine, a puppet animated by senseless violence. He takes to nursing the wounded forming part of their dwindled ranks, doing what little he can, cleaning cuts, stenching blood flows that seem unstoppable, exchanging a few consolatory words with those who seem to be at death's door. Though his soul feels like a withered and dried prune, he listens when they talk of home and their loved ones. He lies about hope, telling them it's possible to entertain it. But he doesn't lie about his own tale of love. 

At dawn he hears the news of what happened at Scullabogue. It's Daegal who tells him. “Some scoundrels retaliated for our men dying in new Ross. They burnt a bunch of loyalists they had rounded up in a barn.”

“Is... Is this true?” Merlin asks, no more spit in his mouth, his heart nearly still in his chest.

“Yes, Cloney told me,” Daegal says, head down with the same shame that burns Merlin. “He's one of the commanders. He knows.”

“How many?”

Daegal shakes his head. “Does it matter?”

“Yes,” Merlin says. “I think it does.”

“More than a hundred,” Deagal tells him, barely seeking his eyes. “They haven't counted the corpses.”

Merlin's heart shuts down. He's had enough of war.

 

***** 

 

The weather seems to match his mood. Despite it being June, heavy rains set in. Merlin looks up and finds that rain drops are coming down fast and fat, like tears. When he tells Daegal, the man laughs at him. “Hardly,” he says. “But it won't be easy fighting in this weather.”

Around his crust of bread, Merlin hums. “No, I don't think it will.”

“And Lake is closing in on us,” Daegal tells him, using his bayonet to cut his own bread. “He's got Duncannon too.”

Merlin tells himself not to think of Arthur, not to conjure the of image of him in his brain. It doesn't work. He pictures him as though he's there, as if the ghost of him is breathing on his neck. He hopes Lake doesn't trouble him, though by all rights he shouldn't, since Lake's English and Arthur is perceived as such too. “I suppose it had to happen,” Merlin says, because he can't bring himself to mention Arthur to his friend. What would he say? “At one point or another, it was something we would have had to face anyway.”

“A big battle, eh?” Daegal says. 

Merlin half wishes for it to take place as soon as possible, so this can be over, half dreads it. Not so much because he thinks he'll die – though he probably will – but because it's been enough. The earth has subsumed enough blood. 

They can never wash their hands clean. He certainly can't. 

In a certain respect the call to arms to Vinegar Hill isn't unwelcome. He doesn't sleep a wink that night before. Counts the stars up in the sky, retraces constellations and lies in the grass. It's something that he's taken to doing in preference to sleeping in a tent or on a bedroll. The ground is damp and lumpy, his bones crack when he moves and he can feel the pain in his joints that comes from that, but he likes it that way. It allows him time to think. Memories of Arthur come the most to the fore, though he tells himself he should put them out of his mind. His thoughts sometimes veer to his father and mother. In the dead of night he wonders whether they would understand this, approve the reality of the change they're tying to work on the land. He knows for a fact his father wanted it and was vocal against the English, but he keeps asking himself if he would have still thought bloody revolt the right means to their end.

It's because he's been kept up by such thoughts that he hears the opening salvo of the artillery bombardment that hits their camp. Merlin picks up his pike and stands. 

Artillery fire rains on them, blooming blood on the bodies of men, turning men into corpses. They fold back and back, the patch of ground in the rebels' control shrinking progressively. As it does, he finds himself fighting elbow to elbow with more and more men. Thrust, parry, duck. A man falls. Take a musket, fire, draw back, duck. Another man falls. The volleys are constant, deafening, and there is no escaping them in the open ground. 

Shells rip away at clusters of bodies in single fell swoops. Around him the grass turns red, a dark variety of it that meanders downhill and mixes with mud. Merlin can't hear any sound anymore, not the shouts, not the echo of artillery. For a while he stands entranced, watching those rivulets feed the earth.

They charge. Merlin goes where he's told, shouting a shout that dries his lungs and leaves him bereft of air. They fail to break the militia lines. Merlin can feel the panic of his comrades in the way their movements change. They turn and flee. 

Merlin has a sabre at his throat, he isn't going anywhere.

He becomes a prisoner, his hands are manacled and he gets tied to a post behind enemy lines. With great glee they tell him that the rebels have lost. “The Irish scum has been routed.”

Merlin answers in Irish. He only gets backhanded for it.

 

***** 

 

The backhanding isn't meant to be his only punishment, he knows that. He's been a prisoner for a week when two big militiamen, glimmering in red, swords at their hips, come for him. He's walked out of the barn they kept him in and marched across across a stone bridge. 

The rains have ceased and wild flowers sprout from the fissures in the masonry. The sun warms his skin. It blinds him too because he stayed too long in the dark during his captivity, but he welcomes its glare. He closes his eyes and marches along, the point of a bayonet at his back. When he purposefully lags behind so as to hear the last of the stream bubbling in his ears, it pierces his skin, the blood seeping hot from him.

When he opens his eyes again he's in a market town, houses in a circle overlooking a stone well, its masonry uneven with the wear and tear of time, thatching cresting their roofs. People gather, a multiplicity of blurring colours in their close-knit ranks. They're talking in low tones, sounds of censure mingled with fear. Merlin hopes some of them understand even though they can't show it. This world though doesn't accept failure. A rotten tomato hits Merlin in the face, the pulp coming apart and dripping from his face. The rotten stench of wasted produce drowns his nostrils.

They tell him to halt, force him in place.

The noose swings in the wind.

“You're lucky we're not burning you,” the militiaman tells him. “Like you did with the loyal subjects of Scullabougue.”

The prisoner standing in front of Merlin says, “And Gibbet Rath is nothing is it? You didn't kill three hundred Irishmen who had surrendered and given up arms; you didn't do that.”

“Enough!” the militiaman shouts, stalking up to the man, his hulking form attempting to dwarf the prisoner.

“Why, what are you going to do?”

The militiamen evidently knows there's nothing he can do to a man already condemned to death. He gives orders to hurry the execution.

Merlin watches five men hang before him. He doesn't know why they're not stringing them up at the same time. It would save them some precious minutes. But he's content to wait. 

“Afraid?” the militiaman asks him. “Pissing your pants, you Irish vermin?”

“No,” Merlin tells him. “Though I'm paying and my hands are as bloody as yours, at least my cause was just.”

The militiaman looks completely befuddled at Merlin's admission of guilt. Merlin guesses that that baffles him nearly as much as the idea Merlin's cause is right. It's still with a confused expression that he walks Merlin to the gibbet.

The hemp is rough around his neck. It smells of wet sheep too. Something primal, something as old as the country. Merlin tries to define the exact nature of the odour, wonders where they retrieved the rope. Perhaps another barn. On a farm. There are likely enough around here.

He doesn't pray, not in so many words. And doesn't think of Arthur because Arthur is innocent of all this and he shouldn't be among Merlin's last thoughts. But he does spare a thought for home. That's what he fought for.

“Come on, go at it,” an impatient yeoman huffs.

Merlin finds his frustration funny.

Hooves strike thunder on the road before the horse appears.

“Hang him and you'll deal with my wrath.” The voice that says that is firm, one that brooks no disrespect.

“And who are you that we should mind that?” the militiaman, who surely holds the highest rank among a gaggle of yeomen, asks.

“Arthur Pendragon,” Arthur says, the sun haloing his hair and making his eyes spark. “Earl of Duncannon.”

 

*****

 

Merlin isn't freed on the spot. He's under surveillance still. He is housed in a prison cell that looks ten times cleaner and more welcoming than the barn they kept him tied in. The only downside is that he can see the courtyard from its narrow embrasure of a window. From it he can see – if he wants – the executions taking place. The unmistakable sound of the gallows' trap door being sprung accompanies most of his waking hours. That there is no escaping.

“You can't stay in Ireland,” Arthur tells him. He's leaning against the wall opposite Merlin's bunk, tapping his riding whip against his leg. “I bought your freedom and your life but you can't stay in Ireland.”

Merlin doesn't think he could. He nods.

Arthur starts pacing. “You must have said something to spite them because they wanted to hang you, bribe or no bribe.”

Merlin hangs his head. “I should probably be flattered.”

“I used all the pull I had,” Arthur says, about facing, his whip now beating a rhythm on his boot. “Got help from my extended family, had them beg all the way from London, Aunt Morgause wrote to Cornwallis.”

“She'll want something in return.” Arthur's relatives aren't easy, loving people. They're schemers. “Without doubt. I'd watch out if I were you.”

“Can you stop being so listless about your own death!” Arthur thunders. 

“I'm sorry you had to beg for me,” Merlin says. “And I didn't die, did I?”

“No,” Arthur shouts, throwing his hands up in the air. “Because I bribed and cajoled, oiled hands and prevaricated, like the men you hate do. I made use of all the advantages of my class. And even so you're lucky they dropped the charges against me.”

Merlin stiffens. “What do you mean?”

“For a while there they thought I had made friends with the insurgents.” Arthur's cheeks twitch. “Because Joyce didn't kill me or destroy my property. General Lake was quite convinced I was a traitor, tainted by revolutionary ideas. Aunt Morgause wrote to say I was a staunch loyalist. She's friends with the Prince of Wales. She convinced him.”

Merlin drops his shoulders. “Oh, all right.”

“I'll give you all that I can,” Arthur says, pacing back to the window, staring out of it. Merlin hopes no execution is taking place. “I bought you passage to Halifax. But it's not completely safe. The French think that capturing ships carrying British cargo is fair game these days. ”

“I heard,” Merlin says, drinking Arthur in, even though he wishes he could ease the rigidity of his limbs, smooth the bunched up muscles in his shoulders. He guesses that's not his place. Not after everything. “I'm all right with that.” 

Arthur twists round, his mouth slowly falling open. “You do realise that that's dangerous. That they could scupper the vessel, take you prisoner.”

“I can't very well go to France, can I? Hostile as they are?” Merlin hadn't thought this through before, had just gone with the flow of events, but now this seems evident. “They like to say they support the Irish cause but just to use us against the English when it's convenient. My passport wouldn't tell them what I am. I'd still be a Briton in their eyes. Funny, isn't it?”

Arthur comes over then, sits next to him on his bunk. He places his hand on Merlin's knee, squeezing tight. “I'm sorry it had to be this way but...”

Merlin doesn't ask what Arthur means. He makes a small noise that can be interpreted whichever way.

Arthur leans in for a kiss. Merlin turns his head. “I don't--” The words dry in his throat. He looks at his palms, opens them and closes them, sees visions of things that have no place in a conversation with Arthur.” “I'm not--”

“I'm sorry,” Arthur says breathing against his neck. “You've been through a lot. I just... I want to be sure you're going to be all right.”

“I'll try.” Merlin can only promise that. He's not lying. “There must be something left out there for me.”

 

***** 

 

The sun shines on the deck, rays of sunlight making their way forward along the starboard side of the vessel. Sliding by the horizon over a choppy sea, it showers the world in brightness. The wind fills the sails and shakes the massive funnels of the packet bound for Halifax. The ship cuts through whirlpools and eddies, then when the wind settles to a breeze that still manages to fatten the sails, it glides over white-caps, flying spray hitting the rails.

The masts flex and groan, canvas whipping and swinging. The ship pitches and tosses in the swell, the timbers and the canvas crack as wind fills the sails. 

Merlin, stiff from lying in his cabin for far too long, watches the trail of white foam in the wake of the ship. He smells salt, a taste of the deep on his tongue. He watches the horizon line. Seagulls and fulmers broach, their wings skimming low, touching the line of the horizon, veering between earth and sky.

“Land ahoy,” a sailor shouts.

 

***** 

 

It's mid October when he lands in Halifax. The pier is teeming with people scurrying to and fro, fleet of foot, bent of back. Most of them are such as him, possessing the clothes on their backs and only a scant amount of baggage. Merlin's luckier than them though. He has the hundred pounds Arthur gave him and no mouths to feed.

It's a beginning.

Because he knows that his money is a finite amount, Merlin tries to go for a job. He tries the harbour first, because he's there and he reckons hands of all sorts must be needed. But all prospective employers turn him down. In most cases Merlin doesn't even get to tell them that he's strong and hard-working before he's shown the door. 

A tall weathered man spits out an orange pit, the rest of his orange sitting in his palm. “They don't like the Irish here much, lad.”

“Oh,” Merlin says, shoulders drooping. He knows he has his country on his tongue. There is no way he can tone it down. “I suppose I'll have to deal.”

The man leans away from the wall. “Yeah, like we all do. Like we all do.” He walks away into the mists shrouding the docks.

Over the next few days Merlin tries the city. He can read and write, he can clean and scrub. He can patch hedges and walls. Surely, a job will chance his way. He knocks on multiple doors, goes to the addresses printed on flyers, but doesn't get hired. He assures all prospective employers he can do everything they want, whatever they ask, he can be an odd job man. And the pay needn't be high. He doesn't mind working hard, he says. But the answer is still no. Someone else always gets hired in his place.

In the end one of these prospective employers tells him, “You were a grounds-keeper, were you?”

Merlin nods frantically. “Yes, yes, I was for years. I grew up on this estate and I learnt the trick of the trade from my father, who was grounds-keeper for thirty years before me.”

“Then you're better off being a farmer,” the man says, handing him a notice. “They're selling lands up north. It's cheap.”

Merlin reads the printed notice from top to bottom, peruses it again just to be sure there's no catch. What this man's telling him seems to be the truth. “Thank, you,” he says, pocketing the notice. “I-- Thank you.”

His journey north starts in the bad season. He pays for passage and for the scant amount of baggage he has. The buggy he was promised turns out to be more of a cart than the real thing. He has to share with a drunkard who wetly sucks from his bottle all the time and smells like Ethanol. A family of three. Also joins the company. They don't speak English but the young wife, or at least the person Merlin supposes to be the young wife, smiles at him from time to time, while the child lives bundled in the blanket they wrap around him, perched on her knees, her hands where the baby's armpits would be if they weren't drowned in fabric.

The moment they leave the city behind, nature surrounds them. Trees sprout tall and wide around them, their bark russet and rough. It lapses into narrow gaps between the road and the hedges. Perennials are everywhere, thick and sturdy, lichen covered. The air is thick with the scent of dark damp earth. It comes in thin blades that slice your lungs with the cold of them.

The road rises and turns, branches out, the foliage shutting out the sun. The forest stretches on and on, yielding to no town or marketplace, no other paths but the one beaten before them. The woods drench his senses with sensation, make him drunk on the damp, pervasive smells.

Food is scarce; the temperatures drop. Night after night they camp in the wild. Merlin has no blanket. Never thought to get one before embarking on this voyage. As it is, he huddles at the foot of a tree hoping it'll break the wind. In a manner of speaking, it does, though Merlin can't always feel his extremities.

Every morning he wakes at dawn. He gets his supply of salted meat and a drink of water, then the journey recommences. When the horses can no longer pass because the roads narrow and become more treacherous they're told to walk. Merlin gets holes in his soles; the arches of his feet ache with an ache that is constant. But it's the child, of course, who can't continue. The family gets left behind.

Over the next two weeks Merlin thins, gets a beard. His legs scarcely carry him but no memories of bloodshed haunt him. It's a fair trade. The misery of guilt doesn't swallow him. He can even let himself think of Arthur. When he does, he smiles a secret smile and carries on. Those times he doesn't see the wilderness around him, but the planes of home, green and misty rushing towards the higher ground Duncannon Manor sits atop.

The thought buoys him. Even imagining a variety of happy futures for Arthur does. He hopes Arthur leaves Ireland for a while. For as long as the enmity between rulers and ruled is so stark, fuelled by the hatred of civil uprising. He wishes him to go to England, where he can be protected by his family. He also prays for Ireland to rise again.

A winding path through the forest opens up, their guide studying the chalk white marks on the trees for directions and leading them forward till the sun sets. 

Merlin's beard is as long and scratchy as his father's was by the time they get to the river. They're ferried on a thing Merlin doesn't dare call a boat or barge. It bobs and jumps, bounces along the current. They brace themselves when rapids come and drink as much water as though they were drowning. When they touch land again, they're drenched to the bone, but, according to their guide, they're much closer to their destination.

They reach it a week or so later, if Merlin's keeping up with the rise and fall of the moon correctly. They come upon an opening, a wider road that seems to lead into a swell of denser woods than the ones they've just left behind. 

The contractor who works for the agency selling them land, gives them a hammer and scythe each. “Welcome to your new home,” he says.

“There's no farms,” the drunkard protests, an objection Merlin would have raised himself if he'd had wind to talk.

“You'll have to clear one,” the contractor says, slipping his fingers in the small pockets at the front of his waistcoat. “But then the land is yours.”

Merlin is no real farmer, not per se, but even he can tell this patch of land is no good. Still it's his for the taking. He can't go back. There's no future for him in Ireland and no strength left in his body to make his way back. He'll winter here, build himself a homestead in the way he helped patch up sheds at Duncannon.

He can do it. Not all in one day but he can do it.

He cuts trees for wood, collects rocks. There is a village not too far away. (If he thinks in miles instead of yards, that is.) He buys utensils, a saw and axe among them. With them he builds a cabin of some sort. Walls come first, roof last. Since he has no idea how to go about building a foundation he makes do with a dirt floor. On the model of other such buildings he's seen in the area, he leaves a hole in the roof so he can have a hearth. Arthur would probably call the place positively medieval, but Merlin breaks into a smile the day he can call himself done. 

This happens right before a deep frost sets in. There's no clearing the land around him for farming after that because snow piles high on his doorstep and the temperature drops so much there is not an hour in the day Merlin isn't shivering. He lives off hunting. He is bad at it, but he's always known how to trap rabbits, thanks to the poachers that sometimes frequented Duncannon. He has nothing to trade but the money Arthur gave him sees him through the worst. 

During the darkest nights, the loneliest nights, he's haunted. By the faces of the men he killed, and by Arthur's smile. He dreams of Arthur often, sometimes in known contexts, walking up the lawn at Duncannon, the sun contouring his shoulders as he rolls them, white silk shirt reflecting its glare. And sometimes he dreams of him here with him, in the wild, this odd place so unlike home, where wolves call out to each other and snow blankets moss till everything is silence.

How impossible. 

He lives off beans and bread, and a kind of black tea that is hardier than any he ever downed at home. He walks around sheathed in blankets, promising himself it'll be different next winter. He'll prepare better. If he survives. 

The frost that makes the ground intractable thaws a month into spring. It leaves the ground slopping in mud, but this is the signal he was waiting for. He can start clearing his patch of land. The good season breaks, summer moistens the ground, makes it more fruitful, and torrents crash down hill, transporting blocks of ice and debris. He no longer needs to collect rain water to wash and cook. 

He works furrows in the fresh ground, plants seeds, saplings. From the ruts a deep earthy smell wafts up to him and Merlin drinks it in. Calluses form on his palm, his skin thickens and his hands ache. His back does too, a low burn at the base of his spine. 

He writes to Arthur, tells him all that he has accomplished, about the house and the climate. 

_I want an orchard,_ he tells him. _As improbable as that sounds I want an orchard and I want to grow things until they ripen. I want to clear another few acres, see what I can do with that, maybe sell the wood._

His letters to Arthur are chock full of details and observations Merlin is sure are mundane and boring. _I slept in the open the other night. I'd never seen so many stars in my life. I caught myself wondering whether that's the same sky you see or not. Whether it's the same from home. But I don't know and wouldn't have anyone to ask. It's solitary here._

One day at the end of July, he sets off for the nearest village. He hasn't been since he first arrived. He dropped in then to buy the supplies necessary to build his rickety lopsided shanty, but has given the place a wide berth since. Mostly because it's populated by the kind of hardy souls that side eye Merlin for being both Irish, he's overheard, and a weakling who won't last through winter. But he goes now because he knows he's made it and because the miller has dogsbodies who make the trek to the closest town harbouring a post office twice weekly. While he can't make the journey himself he wants Arthur to have his letters.

When he began them, it was just for something to do, to tell himself that he hadn't lost all claim on Arthur. To remind himself of him. Not that he can forget Arthur or his love for him, but he writes to teach himself how to talk to him now that their altered conditions are set in place. Even if he won't see him again this matters to him. In the prison in Wexford town, he didn't say anything to him; nothing that had any real meaning passed his lips anyway. But he couldn't then. Not because of the ghost of his own death looming close but because of the violence that had tainted him. But now, as lost as he is in this wilderness world he has no compass for, he thinks he can communicate with him again. Bypass all other considerations and let his soul speak.

Sweat dripping down his back, he makes it into Cenred King's office. He piles coins on his desk, lays a bundle of letters beside the coins. “I want them sent,” he says.

“I thought you'd died out there,” King says, but he pockets the money and the letters. 

“No,” Merlin answers. “The forest hasn't taken me yet.”

Merlin doesn't think of the letters again, though he writes more. Mostly because he'll never know their fate. Whether Arthur gets them or not there's little chance of Merlin ever knowing what happened to them. Even if Arthur receives them, the answer would have to come by naval package and the French still fire on British ships. 

Merlin's days are full anyway, full of breaking the ground with a rusted shovel, and hacking at the undergrowth, felling trees and culling shrubs. Planting, sowing. Honest work, his mother, a farmer's daughter, would have called it.

Though it's still autumn, the crisp, chilled air smells like winter already, like burning evergreens ash and pine, smoky, woodsy, with a touch of frost like ghost breath on a breeze. 

He's insulating the shanty as best he can, when someone reaches the path leading to his homestead, weaving along the shadowed path between trunks of pine and birch. Merlin stops working, wipes at his brow, squints in the distance. 

When the man gets within a few yards of him, Merlin's heart stops. “Solitude must have driven me crazy,” he says.

“Not quite,” Arthur says, a smile pulling at his lips. “Your letters lack coherence and need better punctuation but you're not quite as mad as they advertise.”

Merlin rushes to Arthur, wraps his arms around him and noses his neck, content with inhaling the scent of his skin, and feeling the goose-flesh that rises on Arthur's neck with his lips. “I missed you,” he says.

“God, you're a scarecrow,” Arthur tells him, hugging him tight, so much so Merlin's ribcage can't quite expand with his next breath. “A twig of a man, really.”

“Hey, I work hard, here,” Merlin says stepping out of his embrace. 

“It's not that,” Arthur says, husky. “You've never known how to look after yourself.”

“I object to that,” Merlin says, pulling Arthur into his home. 

He sits him on his bed because he's only got the one chair and that's as uncomfortable as it gets. Merlin prepares Arthur some tea and cuts him a slice of bread. 

“Aren't you asking me why I'm here?” Arthur asks as he watches Merlin deep at work.

“No,” Merlin says, dishing the edibles and passing them to Arthur. “Frankly, I'm just happy and I've learnt not to question that.”

Arthur accepts mug and dish. But neither drinks nor eats. “I had to look after the property.”

“Of course,” Merlin says. 

“I had to find someone worthy of it,” Arthur continues. “I couldn't leave the people to fend for themselves.”

“Leave?” Merlin says, scrubbing at his face, at his beard. “How?”

“But then I found the right person,” Arthur says, this time taking a sip of his tea. “Mordred, Morgause's son. I gifted Duncannon to him. Monetised what I could and left him the estate. It took some time but...”

Merlin knees hollow out. “You didn't. You...”

“Oh, I did,” Arthur tells him, licking at his lips as if to wash away the taste of Merlin's tea. “Of course, I did. You didn't think I'd let you go. I hope...”

“Arthur--”

Arthur gazes away. “Unless of course you meant to start a brand new life here without me.”

Merlin doesn't act as though he doesn't get the reason behind Arthur's fear, because he does. In Wexford town when he was in prison he acted as though he was setting Arthur free. “I killed Arthur,” he says. “And maybe I'd do it again if the circumstances were the same. I thought I couldn't have you. A man of honour, like you.”

“Curse honour,” says Arthur, a stiff bark. “I'd forfeit all honour in the blink of an eye, if... For you.” Arthur pauses, looks him in the eye like what he's saying is the most important thing in the world, then repeats, “For you. Without hesitation.”

“I know you're kind,” Merlin starts.

“And you're quite brave, and loyal,” Arthur says, standing, walking up to him. “An hero to Ireland.”

“Arthur--” Merlin doesn't know what to say, how he got Arthur's respect, when he doesn't think he's worthy of any of it. He's made mistakes; he's seen things that have changed him. He doubts he has ideals still, though he believes in Ireland and that at the time he was bound to act. It's just that sometimes the actions one must take can damn too, no way out. “I--”

“And if you want me,” Arthur says, a hand on Merlin's shoulder, quieting its fine tremors, “then I'm yours, here to stay, make what you want of me.”

“Stay then,” Merlin husks, rubbing his lips against Arthur's until his mouth opens and he can press for entry and tangle them together. 

Arthur bobs his head, wets his lips. “I will.”

Merlin takes the both of Arthur's hands in his. “Are you tired?” he asks. “The journey must have been long.”

“Only a little,” Arthur says, eyes smiling. 

“I should get something hot into you,” Merlin says to himself more than to Arthur. He's not used to having people around anymore so he generally does a lot of muttering these days. “Some good soup.”

“Merlin,” Arthur says, trying to catch a hold of Merlin, who's sprinted forward to make himself busy. “There's no need. I have my tea and cheese.”

Merlin walks over to the hearth. “No, I can take much better care of you.”

“Then it's a newly acquired skill you haven't aimed at for yourself,” Arthur says. Merlin knows he wants to sound contrary, like the man he used to be, but there is way too much fondness in the retort for Merlin to take it to heart. He does what he proposed, placing kindling and logs on the hearth.

With Merlin so intent on coddling him, Arthur finally gives up all opposition. They both settle at opposite corners of the room, waiting for the broth Merlin is preparing to be ready. To the sound of Merlin's bubbling concoction they sit and talk, Merlin describing his year up North, Arthur telling him in more detail how he managed the handing over of the estate, the goodbyes he said. 

When Merlin asks him whether he rues his choice, Arthur says that he doesn't, so surely, so firmly that Merlin believes him even though he knows how Duncannon is important to Arthur, if only as a memory of his mother. 

As the broth steams over, Merlin adds a sprinkling of herbs to the pot. “I've learnt to use what the forest yields,” he says by way of commenting on his culinary skills. 

“Does that mean you're you intent on poisoning us?” Arthur says lightly, challengingly, appearing behind him, a hand on Merlin's waist. 

“No,” Merlin says, breathless with Arthur's touch. “Trust me, it's good.”

Merlin roots for utensils, finds a bowl and a wooden spoon. When the last bubbles have popped and the smoke has curled thickly above the pot, Merlin ladles the broth into the bowls. They brush hands when Merlin passes them to him. Over the bowls, Arthur meets his eyes, grins, makes sure the back of their hands slide together again before setting their plates on the table. Merlin upturns a crate he uses for a stool, cedes the actual chair to Arthur. He'll have to make a new one if Arthur's to stay. 

Merlin settles at his place, rolls his shoulders, inhales. The scent of the soup, herb-heavy and slightly sweet is pleasing. He could almost live off its fumes, he thinks.

"It's a bit watery," Arthur says after a first taste. “But it's very savoury.”

Merlin ducks his head. “Yeah, it's no rich banquet.”

Arthur smiles, and goes for a second spoonful, using his tongue to catch a wayward drop of broth.

As Arthur shoves more down, Merlin starts to eat too, tasting the spices, savouring the texture. Spoons clatter when they rake the bottom of the bowl. The water – which tastes pretty much like pond because Merlin didn't dig a deep enough well – doesn't erase the taste of the broth, which proceeds to linger on his tongue, warming his belly, and with it his spine.

Or maybe the tingle he feels creeping up it is just engendered by Arthur's presence.

"This is the perfect comfort food," Arthur says, knocking their hands together, knuckle to knuckle. He keeps on eating to prove it. 

“You don't need to put up a front. I know what that is. There are roots in there.” Merlin spoons the soup. “And I know what this place looks like, what you left behind.”

"I can't act as though I don't know what you mean." Arthur fastens his eyes on Merlin, clearly wanting Merlin to get his message. "I made sure my people were going to be fine. I ensured the estate's future. But things can be left behind. I know I did easily.”

Merlin sucks on his spoon. “I just wonder whether you realise what you're renouncing.”

“Better than anyone,” Arthur says, serious. “I also know people are worth more than things, more than wealth, and you are worth more than both. More than...”

Arthur doesn't say. He compresses his lips and blushes, but Merlin understands. 

Staring at their entwined fingers, Arthur takes his hand and runs his thumb over Merlin's knuckles. 

Merlin's heart hammers fast. 

They stay put for a while, Merlin enjoying the moment, the silent presence of Arthur. He only stirs to go scrub bowls and pot. 

He's pouring water over the bowls to wipe away the grease, when Arthur shoulders him aside and takes over. He does a poor job of cleaning Merlin's utensils. Merlin can see a dirt patina at the bowls' bottom, but all the same his heart fills to bursting at Arthur's attempt at helpfulness.

When all light from outside dwindles and the candle light barely illuminates the shanty, guttering in and out, Merlin and Arthur go to bed. They slip under the covers, having to negotiate a space that is too small for two adults.

“I'll try to make us a bigger bed too,” Merlin starts.

Arthur cups his face, setlling in a rustle of sheets. “Don't apologise.”

He kisses Merlin slow and sure and tangled, until their breath quickens. He bites Merlin's chin, thumbs Merlin's beard and then covers his cheeks with more nips. “You've grown wild,” he says, mouthing Merlin's cheekbones. 

“Don't you like it?” Merlin asks, his tone a lilt set to denote humour.

“You're always my... “ Arthur palms his chest, high up and to the left. “However much you change you're always in my heart.”

“You're in my everywhere.”

“Somehow I don't think that makes as much sense as you believe it does.”

“Should I be wounded?” Merlin huffs, a smile lancing his face, and half climbs Arthur, pursuing the kiss they'd suspended, deepening it. “I'm not wounded. Nothing can wound me because you're back.”

They pull at their clothing and bare themselves, the makeshift bed creaking under them as they stroke and kiss each other. Merlin draws back, the corners of his lips lifting as he thinks of Arthur in a bed that is, for better or worse, Merlin's, of him wanting to be there. "What are you smiling at?" Arthur asks softly, almost as though he doesn't want to break the silence. 

"You," Merlin says, and by that he means an awful lot of things he's not positive Arthur will understand. "Just you." He crawls down Arthur's body and dips his head to take Arthur, whose jutting cock is hard and red, and already spongily damp at the tip, in his mouth.

Holding the back of his head with his touch, Arthur cups his skull. He fingers his hair, caresses his face, and when Merlin goes deeper, he relinquishes a long breath, a sudden puff of it. 

Merlin lifts his mouth and shakes his head from side to side. "If this isn't..." he says his voice raspy. “what you want, what you... pictured, I--”

“No,” Arthur says, taking in him softly, his eyes rounded with gentleness, even though he looks quite done in with lust, his body hot and damp with sweat, flushed, his cock scandalously raised stiff against his taut belly. “No, this is everything I ever pictured.”

The words stinging heat into his face, Merlin ducks his head, sucking Arthur into his mouth again. For a moment he holds perfectly still, just enjoying the taste, the heavy cock on his tongue, the hand in his hair. He can scarcely credit Arthur's presence here, believe that he's more than a dream, one that he wouldn't have dared contemplate before because its not coming true would have broken his heart. But it's all working out and his heart beats with the joyful beat of a hummingbird's wings.

Then Arthur arches into him, scuttling backwards until he's resting on his elbows, his hand tangled in Merlin's hair as he goes about separating strands, massaging his shoulders, and Merlin can't stay still, he suckles and licks, swallows against the weight of Arthur.

By then, Merlin can tell Arthur is trying not to thrust, not to be harsh, but the snapping of his hips, the redness of his cheeks, and the grunts he releases tell a different story.

A wash of tenderness that saps at his bones seeps through Merlin. He swallows Arthur deeper, the tilt of his cock in his mouth perfect, the smell of his sex both exhilarating and all pervasive.

"Merlin," Arthur says, near to a whine. His hips lift off the bed in short controlled motions Merlin knows are costing Arthur a lot.

In response, Merlin hums around Arthur and makes a point of gliding his mouth along his length, up and down, relentless, to wake sensation in Arthur, to make him feel all of his nerve-endings, one by one.

Arthur's muscles tense and release, the ones in his thighs tremble.

The hand on his nape exerts more pressure, the warmth from it seeping from its palm to the length of Merlin's neck rests on. The fingers belonging to it curl in the littlest reflex.

Calming himself as much as he can, steadying his own case of the shivers, Merlin strokes Arthur with his hands and mouth, licks at him, slow laps bestowed with the flat of his tongue.

Arthur's hips jerk sideways in a twisted motion "Please," he says with the little breath he seems to be able to have held on to.

Merlin quiets him with small noises, sliding his fingers inside him, slowly one by one, letting himself be guided by the keening noises Arthur makes. 

Merlin gets drunk off them: a pleasure that springs from his gut and swells his heart with pride and love and longing. A sharp knot of a feeling, primal and simple. He doesn't poke at it, just does his best to give Arthur what he wants. With the pads of his fingers he can sense the pulse of him at his core, throbbing, steady, hungry. His ears can make out each small sound that Arthur makes.

With an indrawn breath, Arthur's chests lifts and then his belly hollows sharply. He pants, like a horse after a race. 

His own mouth makes wet sounds each time it closes around Arthur, for long slow sucks. He only draws back when Arthur goes on near lock down, his muscles jumping, twitching as if to rein everything in.

"You're trembling like a leaf," Merlin says, full of wonder. 

"That is not true," Arthur says in a voice that's rather thin. "You're wrong, of course," he says again after he's cleared his throat into a steadier tone.

"We can go easy," Merlin suggests. It's been a while since he's lain with anyone, that being Arthur, and before him Merlin's never known the real touch of love. He just indulged in hurried sex acts that tasted anonymous, forbidden, not quite satisfying with their lack of affection, recognition, hope. He hasn't asked what it's been like for Arthur, what it was like before they knew each other this way, but he guesses the intensity of this is spooking Arthur just as much as it's setting Merlin a-tremble.

"Don't you dare do that," Arthur says, pulling him on top of him, roaming his hands over Merlin's back, plane by plane, hollow by hollow, opening his legs. "I thought I'd lost you."

Merlin understands. Merlin understands perfectly. He knows that desperation, that sense of pure loss that can hollow people out. "You never have, because I was always yours through and through," Merlin says, tapping his finger at Arthur's heart.

He uses oil on Arthur, oil for hinges funnily enough. Moving over Arthur, repositioning his legs, Merlin presses forward with the rhythm of circumspection. 

"You weren't there," Arthur says as Merlin moves inside him. "Something of you--" His breath hitches as though he's in pain. He frowns through it though, adds, "Even before you left. What makes you you was gone. And I missed that."

Merlin lowers his head, sets a pace of ebb and retreat that makes him tremble and Arthur moan. "I was lost, at war," Merlin says, concentrating on giving Arthur pleasure. "I'm not, not anymore."

He moves his hips tight against the shore of Arthur's body, breathes deeply, so as not to get lost in the warmth, in the grip of him that's so perfectly hot and slick, and more importantly Arthur, that it's robbing Merlin of all coordination. 

For his part, Arthur cradles him steady with his legs, clamps his hands around his forearms and pulls him to him, saying, "Don't do that again. You're not allowed. You can't go missing." 

Merlin lowers his body and scrapes his dry mouth along Arthur's clavicles, scatters kisses over their length, wherever he can reach. When Arthur's breaths go deeper, Merlin shifts his knees apart with his legs, changes angle. He holds there, pushes forwards lightning fast, sobbing as he goes. "I won't," he blabbers, feeling like he's home though the sky above him is not that of Ireland, sensing the love washing through him, remaking him clean, though his soul's not as unblemished as it used to be.

Arthur holds on against the tide of Merlin's body, sheathes him perfect. They rock together, slow at first, touching each other with their hands, Merlin's at Arthur's hips, Arthur's over his spine and buttocks, ghosting under them, levering Merlin into a motion that buries Merlin deep within Arthur.

The ache of arousal plunges lower into his belly, sweet and unavoidable. His movements roughen, quicken, he puts a hand to Arthur's cock. Arthur bites his shoulder bloody when he comes, the smell of it pungent, the wet of it sticky against Merlin's body.

Merlin moans sharp, twisting, shifting them up and up on the bed. His body snaps, staccato fast. It tenses, and then he follows this gentle undertow of a current that bears him through orgasm. In the aftershocks, he keeps moving inside Arthur, spilling the last of his release. He kisses Arthur moist and open-mouthed, not holding back on all the emotions that drown him in the presence of Arthur, and his blinding love of him. He kisses Arthur with the kisses of his mouth and plans never to stop.

He doesn't say 'I love you'. He doesn't need to. He says, “Sleep well.” And Arthur kisses him goodnight, the first, he hopes, of many a one shared together.

 

The End

**Author's Note:**

> I would also like to thank oflittleuse for supplying me with so much information about early ninteenth century Canadian immigration patterns. The ending is all you.


End file.
